By 2016, 70% of CIOs’ chief role to shift from running IT to becoming innovation ally: IDC

Despite of the massive digital transformation and automation movement across industries and sectors, Indian CIOs strongly feel that the CIO’s role is actually evolving and is not becoming redundant and diminishing anytime soon

Bangalore: Technology is changing at a much rapid pace than in the past and its impact is highly visible in all aspect of life including businesses and organizations. A growing number of business functions and processes are automated today in order to reduce the overall cost and human dependency.

So amid this onslaught of tech disruption, there’s a high possibility that the crucial roles and jobs of CIOs and IT practitioners are likely to get impacted in a way that could redefine their future career paths.

In fact, the global research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) in one of its global CIO predictions reports released in late 2013 had predicted that the roles of CIOs and IT management will get changed and evolved in very near future.

By 2016, the primary role of 70% of CIOs will change from directly managing IT to becoming innovation partners, the report predicted.

"IDC believes there are clear indicators that the existing role of technology management will evolve in a few short years to a set of roles that includes management of innovation, information intelligence, customer experience, and digital business presence," IDC’s Research Network – adjunct research advisor Fred Magee was quoted in the CIO prediction report.

"It's going to be an exciting decade. This year's predictions largely focus on the near to midterm of 2015–2018. It is worthwhile, however, for CIOs to realize that predictions are not finite and happen in a continuum of change — just as their roles within the enterprise do," Magee had said in the report.

Some of the key CIO predictions mentioned in the IDC report were –

#By 2017, 40% of CIOs will rise to the challenge of becoming strategic partners—and not just act as CXOs.

#By 2017, 60% of CIOs will support agile architectures with a mix of cloud-based interfaces for legacy and next-generation apps.

#By 2015, 80% of CIOs in consumer businesses will integrate IT with public social networks in bid to meet the needs of young and mobile customers.

#By 2018, Third Platform technologies (Vendors will provide mobile, social, big data and cloud services, this service is called the "Third Platform") will redefine 90% of IT roles.

However, in the present times, there’s been fair amount of changes that many CIOs in India have shared their experiences that actually substantiate, what IDC report had predicted three years ago.

CIO – Career Is Over!

This may sound a real bad joke for CIO community, but certainly new technology such as cloud, big data, analytics, machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) is unlikely to destroy career graphs of most CIOs. However, it does test their skills, understanding and knowledge in terms of better leveraging those technologies for business functions and performance.

Few years ago, in relation to cloud and CIO’s changing role, Tom Fisher, Oracle SVP & Global Commercial CIO in a blog post wrote that although cloud computing is arguably one of the most exciting things that’s happened in the IT space for decades, it is also the catalyst for many a CIO identity crisis.

“The simple fact is this: the emergence of cloud has fundamentally changed the role of the CIO; obsoleting job descriptions, altering organizational structures and changing the benchmarks of success,” Fishers says in the post.

Further, Fisher emphasizing on the knowledge aspect adds, “Business knowledge is required to drive mission critical processes, the market knowledge is required to capture emerging opportunities and the technical knowledge is required to bring those elements together all drastically change—and elevate—the job of the person occupying the CIO seat.”

CIO – Chief Innovation Officer

According to Oracle’s SVP & Global Commercial CIO Fisher, all of the highly technical responsibilities are extremely important for CIOs but the biggest change in the CIO role is something far more significant: a transformation from technology head into a Chief Innovation Officer.

Interestingly, Indian CIOs equally matches their global counter parts and strongly believe that the current or future set of technologies is unlikely to jeopardize the profession of CIOs and will not able to replace CIOs and IT practitioners in organizations and enterprises.

Citing the example of driver’s role in old steam engines in comparison with today’s automated electric engines, Tally Solutions CIO Kamal Sharma says, “Though the electric engine is automated, it still needs a driver to control and manage its electrical systems as well as to take key decisions like speed, applying breaks or direction while driving the engine.”

“Same way, if you relate CIO’s role in today’s time, I would say even enterprises and organizations can deploy or use automated systems but it is the CIO who would actually help them scale-up in terms of leveraging advanced technology and drive business in efficient manner,” he adds.

An ideal CIO, according to Sharma, is the one who is blessed with two acumens – business and technology; henceforth he has business understanding along with IT skills that can help organization grow by leveraging technology in much better way.

However, Indian CIOs do agree that their role is evolving in terms of what businesses expect them to deliver and too in-sync with the new technology.

“In past they (CIOs) were managing on-premise IT infrastructure but today they are enabling organizations in leveraging cloud, big data and analytics to scale-up business operations,” Sharma observes, how CIOs are transforming themselves and aligning with new technology.

CIO – Chief Influential Officer

According to Bangalore based Syngene International’s CIO Ajit Manocha, change is only constant, which means the roles of CIO might change but their needs will remain always.

In his view, today’s CIO (Chief Information Officer) will be tomorrow’s Chief Influential Officer based on what he or she will be expected to do in respective roles and organizations.

“However, productivity will remain key to CIO’s role even if the role gets altered going ahead. But how fast they are able to adopt and enable themselves to those changes will determine CIO’s existence and purpose,” comments Manocha.

Abel Correa is one of the best real-life examples to what Manocha pointed.

New roles of future CIOs

In fact, Correa, who was heading as CIO of Arvind Limited for close to three years, but was recently elevated to the new role of Head – IT Strategy and Project Governance to meet business needs of his organization.

Correa has a strong knowledge and understanding of the retail industry, which his company is leveraging by moving him from the CIO role to the new role of Head – IT Strategy and Project Governance.

“Today, CIO in the retail space has to have a digital mindset covering the end to end business process. She or he is required to double-up as a marketing person and deploy IT tools in engaging the consumer for retaining or getting incremental sales,” Correa explains how CIOs in the retail industry are expected to perform dual tasks of IT and marketing.

In his views, going ahead today’s CIOs in the retail sector will be asked to lead the role of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in near future as well.

In general, Correa says that CIOs will have to focus on outcomes rather than the IT product or technology. Citing an example of Customer Relation Management (CRM) software, Correas points out that the outcome of CRM should be consumer engagement instead of just being a point to calculate loyalty program.

“Basically, CIOs are giving direction to organizations in driving business even when technology gets changed because apart from technology understanding they also bring lot of business understanding and insights. So the role of CIOs may evolve with the time however it will not diminish,” Sharma concludes.